HRC Blog

Openly Gay CEO Looks to Future for LGBT Business Leaders

After his bank became public on the stock exchange, Trevor Burgess became one of the first openly gay CEOs on Wall Street.

Burgess is the chief executive of C1 Financial Inc., a bank based in Florida. The company debuted on Wall Street as a publicly traded company.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Burges’s success as an LGBT CEO is bittersweet – while he is happy to be open with his sexuality as an executive, he is “a little bit sad” that there are so few other business leaders he can identify with.

“I’m excited that there will be at least one example for people,” Burgess told WSJ. “We’ve got good examples for basketball players, arts, football, but where’s Wall Street?”

In order to foster LGBT visibility in the corporate world, HRC’s Workplace Equality Program seeks to provide businesses and employers with resources to promote fairness in the workplace.

The reluctance of LGBT workers – even in the C-suite – to come out is reflected in HRC’s survey and report of over 800 LGBT workers across the country in The Cost of the Closet, which revealed that fifty-three percent of LGBT employees hide who they are at work. Even so, companies can help foster an inclusive corporate climate and lead by example through trainings aimed at improving the day-to-day climate for LGBT employees, making significant improvements in the lived experience of their employees. You can learn more about the surprising findings at www.hrc.org/climate.